March shook his head. “And to think that I’ve hardly seen a submarine!” he muttered to himself. “And I surely haven’t been inside one. But Scoot’s already been up in a plane! It just goes to show,” he told himself, “that submarines are tougher than planes. Just think of the tests we’ve got to go through before they can even let us take a ride in a sub. With a flier all he’s got to do is pass a physical test!” “And speaking of classes,” Scoot’s letter went on, “they are really tough! Remember back in college we used to think we had to study fairly hard? Boy, we just had a picnic in those days! We’d look on that kind of business as a hilarious vacation down here.” March felt worse than ever. “I’m just wasting time!” he complained to himself. “Not even a class yet, and Scoot’s studying already!” He finished Scoot’s letter quickly, learning that he had made a few good friends already, that he felt fine, that he loved flying. Then March sat down and wrote Scoot a long letter. “I’ll tell him about the pressure chamber,” March said. “I’ll show the lad that we’re doing plenty here that he never even dreamed of. And I’ll tell him about the escape tower we’re going to have a try at tomorrow. That ought to show him that he’s picked just an easy branch of the service.” So March wrote, and he told Scoot plenty. He made the test in the pressure chamber sound much more harrowing than it had actually been, even inventing one man who passed out, bleeding profusely, in the middle of the test. Then he felt better, and went down to dinner feeling once more that he was in the cream of the Navy. As he walked down the hill he heard the drone of an airplane motor overhead. “Simple,” he said to himself. “See how easy it is? Just push a stick this way or that, just push a couple of pedals, and keep your eyes on a couple of dozen instruments. Why, in a sub we’ve got more instruments and dials than in twenty-five bombing planes!” When he sat down next to Stan Bigelow, it was even better, for Stan agreed with him completely about the super-importance of the submarine service, thinking up a few additional reasons for its superiority over Naval Aviation that had not occurred to March. Then they began discussing the escape tower test the next day. “Do you know much about this Momsen Lung they use?” Stan asked. “I saw some today when we took the pressure test, but I don’t know the details of how they work.” “Yes, I read all about them a few years ago,” March answered. “They were invented by an Annapolis man—then Lieutenant Charles Momsen—not much more than ten years ago. And you know, Stan, that guy conducted every single experiment himself—wouldn’t let anybody else take the chance.” “Boy, he should have got a medal for that!” Stan exclaimed.